As you, avid reader of our humble blog knows, we’ve been working on the new update for quite some time now.

Today, it’s all about enemies. Enemies are a very important part of every game. And sometimes they can single-handedly determine a huge part of your game mechanics. I mean, most of the challenges in games come from the conflict, so if you have very boring enemies, the conflict, or the created situations will be boring in consequence.

So, following that train of thought, we had an interesting variety of enemies before, but we felt that we could do better, that we could push a little further some ideas about enemy mechanics.

Here are a few examples of new enemies in Okhlos:

Kamikaze (working title*)

One of the first things we noticed on the vanilla version of Okhlos (wow, Okhlos vanilla version is a thing now) is that not too many players felt compelled to escape from situations. And the defense button is really good if you catch the correct timing. Also, there are almost no enemies that actually go after you, maybe the Satyrs, but not many.

With the kamikaze, you feel forced to escape because they will explode after a short time. Besides that, they explode a few seconds after being killed, so you have to choose the correct moment to defeat them.

The Champions

A whole new type of unit we are introducing in this update are the Champions. They appear only once per world. Like we do with the gods, the order is random so you never know which champion will appear in what world (but we have some rules about which can appear in which world internally).

As with the Kamikaze, we analyzed which were the interesting bits of the combat and which were not. Eventually, we came up with some ideas about what would be cool to have.

We have what is basically a Hosioi++, he launches 8 fireballs in all directions. You might try to use defense, but depending on the spread of the mob, you might have to do it multiple times to protect every unit.

We also have a giant Trojan Horse, which will spawn multiple enemies after being defeated. Not only the feeling of fighting this 20+ warriors is awesome, but the Trojan Horse is the first and so far only character in 3D in the game!

We have a super healer, which will be constantly healing the rest of the enemies on the level so you have to attack him first or defeating other enemies will be near impossible in advanced areas.

Stheno and Euryale are the new Gorgons. We had Medusa as an ordinary enemy before, but she only affected a small area. It doesn’t matter where you are, they will transform ALL YOUR UNITS in your mob into stone, and you will be on your own for some time, trying to avoid them.

We have plenty more of new enemies, but we don’t want to spoil them, so look for them in the update!

* Kamikaze is actually the temp name, but I think we forgot to think in a proper name, and we already sent the strings to localization, so I think Kamikaze will have to do.

As we announced last week, Okhlos is getting a juicy new update with tons of new content, changes on the gameplay, balance and fixes (and a few more things ;) ).

This week I’ll talk about a new type of heroes and some big changes we did on the Units’ Markets.

Union Reps

One of the biggest changes is the introduction of the Union Reps. You need to unlock these heroes first, but once unlocked and selected from the Agora, they will turn all bystanders appearing on the following levels into the same type.

The Warrirors’ Union Rep

For example, the Warriors’ Union Rep will transform every bystander in the following worlds into warriors, which is kind of risky, because you will have an incredibly amount of attack power, but because no other type of unit will appear after, you will have no extra lives (the philosophers), no items (only the slaves can carry items), and your mob will look like this:

Which is awesome and very easy to read. In this way you can easily spot a very unique hero or unit.

You can choose Union reps for each type of basic unit.

But the interesting bit of this is the mixing of different heroes. You can choose citizens and slaves only, for example, and you always will be able to buy kings to increase your mob (kings can only be bought with citizens) and you will be able pick up a ton of items.

You can mix things up and get really weird combinations, which is something that we always tried to push in Okhlos, mostly with the heroes. This is a step forward in that direction.

This mob has the Citizens’ Union Rep, as well as the Philosophers’ and Defenders’. Tons of lives and defense power and a huge mob! Just don’t expect to hit very hard.

The New Unit Market

While we were implementing these new heroes, we thought that we should revisit the old Units Market. The Units Market has a simple purpose: To exchange units of one type, for units of another. The way we had it working before the update was like this:

We determined a random type of unit, let’s say philosophers, and then randomly we set three types of units to exchange for them.

So, if you had a few warriors to spare, you could buy more philosophers for your mob.

Because of the random nature of the selection process, you would very often find that you couldn’t buy any of those (that’s why the options are blacked out). And with the introduction of our new Union Reps was worse because if you are full of warriors but you don’t have the option to utilize warriors as a currency, you simply are locked from buying anything.

We changed things in two ways here.

For starters, we used an algorithm to sort the store which is similar to the one we use in the Hero Market. Buying heroes in Okhlos is one of the most gratifying parts of the game, and if the heroes presented are always the ones you can’t buy, the player will feel frustrated. So we tweaked things a bit. We make a list of which heroes you can buy according to the units you have, and then we throw some randomness into the list.

Now we do the same thing in the Units Market, we analyze which units the player has and then we present them with options accordingly. If you are playing with only one union rep, the choice in the store will be boring. You will always have only one option to choose, and the others will be locked.

The other thing we did was to change the way the store is presented. Now, instead of always having a unit type which you can pay with three different currencies, you will always have the same currency and players will choose which type of unit they want. The options are presented based on what units you have, so it’s very likely that you will always be able to exchange units, and because the choice is about which units you get instead of how you pay for them, it simply feels better.

Maybe this is obvious, but it is way better to be able to choose WHAT are you buying instead of HOW are you paying for it. And it only took us 5 months to figure it out!

This is the first of many changes we are introducing in the upcoming update. What do you think?

Remember, if you want to try it, just ask us the pass of the Steam branch!

We’ve migrated from Unity 4 to Unity 5. And a lot of improvements were made. The most important ones are that now the game supports cursor lock on multi monitor displays, and an overall improvement in graphics, shadows and shaders. We’ve also changed the pieces left by a building when it’s destroyed, and a done lot of bug fixing.

Bug Fixes:
– The resolution issues which made you unable to play the game on some AMD configurations (mostly on some MacBook Pro) are now fixed
– Beating the game with Einstenos in the mob, no longer makes that if you start a new run at that moment it crashes upon finishing an area
– Fixed a loading freeze when trying to spawn a hero that was already in mob (inside one of the special buildings)
– Fixed a crash after killing Hades (with Thucydides in the mob, and another hero affected by his ability also in the mob but dead)
– Gryphons can no longer get stuck flying away from the mob after killing a unit
– Flipped screen on Lemnos in some configurations when the anti-aliasing is activated
– Dying at the same as defeating a boss no longer makes you respawn at the next world but without a mob
– Pyrrho will now not kill any heroes, as part of his ability
– Stats are not stored any more during Crypto runs (as are persistent heroes)
– Panacea will no longer try to bring back to life disbanded units (which resulted in a mess)

Plus several other minor issues.

And lastly, here is a screen showing some of the new illumination and shaders.

The main reason behind this is that it will solve the issues that prevented people with some Mac Book Pro configurations (and a few other setups) from playing the game. Asides from this, probably the coolest feature we are introducing in this version, is CURSOR LOCK!

(This will only work for the people who owns Okhlos on Steam)

For all of you who are playing with mouse and a multi monitor setup, and you hate when your mouse escapes the window, now the mouse will be locked to the window!

As far as we know, this feature works only on PC and Linux. Unity currently does not support it on Mac.

We are preparing a open branch for all of you who already have the game. Just go to your Steam Library, select Okhlos and then properties. Go to the betas tab, and there you will be able to choose “Unity 5 Migration”.

You will see Okhlos [EngineMigration] on your steam Library and you’ll know it worked!

This is not final, so if anyone wants to help us, feel free to post any bug or problems you find on the Steam forums, in the “Unity 5 Migration” thread.

We have amazing news! After almost 4 years of Development, Okhlos is out now!

These past few weeks we’ve been working on Okhlos a lot, and probably neglected a little bit the dev blog. We are still planning on doing some more articles about Okhlos, so stay tuned!

If you want to buy the game, use these links!

These four years had been an amazing experience. An experience which hasn’t finished yet. Today is launch day, and we don’t have any idea what we will be facing! Wish us luck!

Also, if you had been reading our ramblings all this time, thank you so much! We really appreciate your support!

What is Okhlos?

Squeeze into your toga and slide on your sandals to rally the angry mobs of Okhlos and bring down the oppressive god of mythological Greece! Your beloved people will not longer stand for the abuse from their deities and take up arms against them and taking down anything and everything in their path. Topple the beastly minotaur, bring down sacred temples, and confront the almighty Olympians themselves while recruiting and balancing your unruly mob with warriors, peasants, slaves and even livestock in their quest for freedom from Mount Olympus! It’s total anarchy in the birthplace of democracy!

The people are angry and have united behind the noble philosophers to do their bidding to take down the soldiers, mythical beasts and temples under the control of the twelve vile gods.

Carefully recruit your followers from warriors, peasants, slaves and beasts of burden and unlock special units or swap units for one of 100 legendary heroes to upgrade the mob and increase their savagery. Wield the power of Heracles, Leonidas, Pandora, and Socrates to turn your mischievous gang into a formidable army!

Every campaign against the gods is different with changes to heroes, monsters, and bosses – and even the mob itself – each time you and your followers set out for battle. Traverse eight procedurally generated Greek cities and never fight through the same world twice!

Make your way through all manner of beasts, warriors, and demi-gods to arrive at the feet of the maleficent Olympians and unleash the power of the people in epic boss battles set against ancient ruins before they were ancient!